


All That Remains

by ilyahna1980



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anxiety, Death Is All Past Tense - No Active Murder, Depression, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Murder, Mystery, Police Procedural, Serial Killer, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-23 12:54:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4877632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyahna1980/pseuds/ilyahna1980
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke and Anders are partners in the Major Case division of their local district. Hawke is broken by recent loss; Anders too afraid of compromising their friendship to admit that he loves him. A killer strikes close to home, the pattern both sinister and baffling, and the two must struggle together to break the case even as the clues begin to point toward an unlikely suspect.</p><p>Inspired by art / AU suggestion from Penguins-pls on Tumblr. Find me on Tumblr as ilyahna1980.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Insomnia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BusinessBird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BusinessBird/gifts).



> I set this story in a location I'm familiar with so I can accurately describe the scenery. Actual names of establishments (like schools / bars) will be fictional. I do my best to be as accurate as possible with procedure, but I'm not a cop, so, clearly it won't be perfect.

**Sunday, December 27, 2014**

**5:49 A.M.**

**Minneapolis, MN**

**Garrett Hawke**

 

He could feel the cold, bleeding through the glass. It was the bitter chill of the last vestige of a winter night: the lonely, familiar moments when the sun was both as long absent as it was soon to rise. The sky beyond the window was the ambiguous twilight of an ever wakeful city, ubiquitous snow muted to gray but flecked intermittently with the broken twinkling of colorful Christmas lights. It should have been cheerful, but it wasn't.

He stifled a sigh. The sharp, pervasive sense of anxiety radiated through his chest, clenching at his lungs. It was more persistent than it ever had been. He consciously unclenched his fingers from the arm of the chair, and rubbed his hands across his face, feeling the unchecked weekend growth of beard. It was ragged, and graying in places, like he felt.

He glanced across the room, finding the obtrusive red glow of the numbers on the alarm clock easily enough in the semi-darkness. That it was ten until six in the morning was no surprise to him. Insomnia was no longer an occasional inconvenience. It was a way of life.

The digital fifty became fifty-one, and he looked away. His eyes wandered over the shadows of the bed. She was there: the waitress from the bar, hidden beneath the blankets next to an empty space that had been him. A frown creased his brow, an ephemeral sense of wrongness stirring through him that looking at where she lay he experienced not the least emotion beyond a loathsome curiosity at his own motivation. _Why was he here?_ What had he been thinking when he told her he'd stay? There had been times in the past when he might have truly wanted to. When the arms of another person might have offered something: passion, comfort, companionship. Those concepts, however, had been born away on a tide of sleeplessness and loss, and Garrett had no energy left to pursue them.

He had been dressed for hours, sitting in the chair by the window. In retrospect, he realized that he could not recall what thoughts had passed through his mind as he'd stared out at the city. It was a peculiar and disconcerting state of blankness, that which too often substituted for sleep. He cast another look through the glass, thinking that the sky was perhaps a slightly yellower shade of gray than it had been a moment before.

Six A.M.

He stood, careful that his shoes made no sound against the hardwood floor. He lifted his coat gently off the back of the chair, keeping his hand over the pocket where he'd left his keys and the phone that he'd turned off sometime the previous afternoon. He realized with some relief that he'd never given the waitress his phone number. Just another bar to avoid in the future.

He glanced once more at the bed and the sleeping form within it, and just as quickly away. Then he turned, and without pausing again, he slipped silently out the door and into the growing dawn.

 

**Sunday, December 27, 2014**

**8:30 A.M.**

**St.Paul, MN**

**Lukas Anders**

 

Anders set the nearly empty sugar container aside and stirred his coffee. He dropped the spoon unceremoniously on the counter without regard for the dark beads of liquid that splattered with it. He took a long drink – it was lukewarm at best – and picked up his cell phone with his free hand. He swiped to his text message inbox, but there was nothing new. Just like his incoming call log. Taking a deep breath, he pressed the icon to redial his number. It went straight to voicemail, again. Just like it had the other twenty times he had called him since Christmas Day. He disconnected without leaving a message, frustration tight in his throat.

He checked again to make sure that the phone was set to vibrate when it rang, and then shoved it in the pocket of his pants. He drained his coffee and left it beside the spoon, not caring about the stain forming on his white counter top.

He was worried about his partner.

Grabbing his keys from the kitchen table, he pulled his coat on as he walked out the door. The air was frigid, laden with moisture. He felt his muscles shivering as he climbed into his car, and he wasn't sure it was entirely from the cold. He slammed the door and cranked up the heat, waiting impatiently for the frost coating the windshield to melt as he tugged gloves and a hat from his coat pocket, fumbling them on before at last leaning his head against the seat and willing himself to relax.

It hit him then, how much Hawke had changed. Gone was the man with the easy laugh, the constant, crass joke. Truthfully, he had always had a brooding side: anyone with his past would, but Anders had always seen it work _for_ him, not against him. Lately, however, he seemed to be slowly caving in on himself.

It had started slightly less than a year before, when his mother had been the victim of a serial killer – a killer they had been investigating for months. Hawke had been the one to find her body, and the stress of her death – its gruesome manner following only a year behind the horrific car accident that had claimed his younger brother – had turned Anders' charismatic, sharp-witted partner into a bare shadow of the man he remembered from their first years in homicide. Anders had stood beside him at his mother's grave when they laid her to rest, but it was Garrett Hawke that was the ghost.

Anders knew his partner wasn't sleeping. He couldn't remember when he'd seen him last without those dark circles underscoring his eyes. He had lost enough weight that even Captain Vallen had asked about his health. The passion Hawke had once shown for their work was gone. He had loved being a detective once, he knew. Now Anders had the impression that his job was an overwhelming burden for him. That interacting with anyone at all was a burden.

The frost had turned to rivulets of liquid that trickled down the windshield. He cleared it away with a quick swipe of the wiper blades, and pulled out of the driveway. Knowing that he was moving toward Hawke's apartment, toward the possibility of knowing something one way or another, made his heart hammer.

 _How had it gotten this bad?_ That he could imagine that his partner, his friend, could harm himself? Normally a long weekend without talking to Hawke would not have worried him. This weekend, though, had been Christmas. It had taken Anders and Bethany, his sister, two weeks of playful cajoling and eventual earnestness to get him to agree to a dinner at his place on Friday afternoon. When Hawke had finally consented, the man had actually smiled. It was the first time Anders had seen him smile in more than six months. He'd even talked about cooking something, which would have been an amusing disaster, if anything. He'd made Anders promise not to buy him anything. He hadn't even been terribly grouchy about the prospect of Bethany's boyfriend, Brian Fenris, being invited. Hawke didn't approve of his sister dating a cop, much less a narc.

And then he hadn't shown up. Anders had called him, and left a string of messages that ranged from curious to worried. He'd gone to look for him, checking his apartment, the coffee shop across the street, the library, and, although without much hope, the precinct. He'd left a note on his door, telling him no one was angry that he'd decided not to come, but imploring him just to call and let them know he was ok. Especially Bethany, who'd lost just as much. But there had been nothing, and Hawke's phone had been off since sometime the day before. Anders couldn't shake the thought that the holidays, the first without his mother, had been too much for him, and his partner hated that he could see that in him now. That possibility. It scared him.

The miles between Anders' house and Garrett's apartment in St. Louis Park were much longer than he remembered them, although the same half hour passed during the drive, just as it had the night before, and the day before that. _What would he do if...._ He shook his head to rid himself of the thought, and then jumped suddenly as his pocket vibrated. The ringing became audible, louder, as he tugged the device out with one hand. The car listed dangerously to the side, and he jerked it straight as he lifted the caller ID into view.

He heaved a discouraged sigh, and answered the call.

“Yes, Captain?” He tried not to let his disappointment bleed into his tone.

Vallen's pause indicated the effort was not entirely successful. “Anders, I'm sorry. I know this is your downtime, but I need you and Hawke in here ASAP.”

“I'm on my way to St. Louis Park right now,” he said, and then, with a knot of anticipation in his stomach, he added: “Have you called Hawke?”

“You call him,” Vallen said, and Anders felt a surge of indignation at her tone. The captain and his partner had developed a strained relationship. Hawke's lateness. His state of dress. His lack of grooming. His drinking.

“We'll be there,” Anders said, and hoped to God it was the truth. He couldn't very well tell the captain his partner was in the wind.

“I'm counting on it,” Vallen said, and the connection went dead.

Anders bit his lip in frustration as he tossed the phone into the seat beside him. Distracted by the call, he almost missed his turn. Braking quickly, he ignored the screech of tires from the car behind him and the irate blast of a horn as he turned toward the apartment.

It was a block away from the four story brownstone where his partner lived that he saw it, and a rush of icy relief flooded through him. Hawke's dark blue '65 Mustang GT Fastback, the car he and Varric had been working on restoring since Anders had known the man. It had definitely _not_ been there the last several times Anders had driven past the apartment. He pulled in just behind it and yanked the keys out of the ignition in the same moment that he was stepping out of the car. Passing Hawke's vehicle, he tugged off a glove and pressed his hand against the hood, elated to feel heat from a recently active engine.

He almost ran the block to Hawke's apartment, an awkward stride over patches of snow and ice, and navigated the steps two at a time. As he grasped the handle of the lower level door, he wondered suddenly what his hurry was. Had he not just established that Hawke was at least alive? Taking another deep breath, he mentally composed himself before he pulled the door open.

Anders froze.

Hawke was right there, his mailbox open, envelopes in his hands. For a moment the other man remained absorbed, filing one envelope to the back of the stack, and tossing another in a trashcan near his feet. Then the cold breeze from the open door hit him, and he turned his head to look at him.

Anders couldn't place the expression on his face. It was almost as though he wasn't looking at Garrett Hawke at all. He looked like he hadn't showered all weekend. His black hair was in disarray, and Anders could swear it was shot through with more strands of gray then a week before. Dark eyes were bloodshot, and Anders could smell the alcohol from where he stood. Apprehension filled him anew.

“Garrett...” he began, but paused, not knowing what to say to him. In that moment of silence, Hawke looked quickly away and slammed his mailbox shut. He shoved the mail into the inner pocket of his coat.

“I'm fine,” he snapped, and moved away from him, taking several of the stairs toward his floor while Anders stood in the open doorway, slightly stunned by the vehemence in Hawke's tone. Then, recovering himself, he opened his mouth to say something, anything, when he saw Hawke's grip on the banister constrict, knuckles turning white before relaxing. Then his partner turned, and eyes downcast, he descended the stairs until he was before Anders again.

“I'm sorry,” Hawke said, and his haunted eyes fluttered up to his briefly before returning to the floor.

Without thinking, Anders reached out to touch his arm. Hawke flinched, and he pulled his hand back.

“Are you ok?” he asked him, knowing he sounded worried. Knowing it wasn't just concern for a co-worker, or a friend, in his tone. “I thought you were coming over Friday, Garrett. When you didn't show up, we thought...”

Hawke looked up then, searching Anders' face with an expression that was a mixture of sadness and annoyance. He didn't bother to ask what they had thought. It hung in the air between them, and he didn't deny it. Anders felt sick to his stomach.

Hawke looked away again, at the wall.

“Like I said, Lukas... I'm sorry. I really intended to be there. But...” he trailed off.

“I came by,” Anders admitted. “Where were you?” Perhaps he shouldn't be asking that question. Perhaps it wasn't his business, however much he wanted it to be.

Now Hawke's hand moved to his face, fingers pressed against his forehead. Anders' trained eye caught the slight coloring of his ashen cheeks. With cold certainty, he _knew_ , and he bit back the jealousy that had no place between them.

“Look...” Anders said instead. “Don't worry about Friday. I'm just … glad you're ok.” He waved the hand that still clutched his cell phone. “The captain wants us downtown. Something's going on.”

Anders thought Hawke looked relieved, but couldn't be sure if it was because he had dropped the subject of his partner's absence, or his deeds, or that the prospect of having something to occupy his attention appealed to him.

Glancing furtively at his clothing, Hawke said: “I need to shower first. Change. Meet me across the street, at the coffee shop,” he added, and without waiting for a response, he was moving up the stairs to his apartment, disappearing onto the second floor.

Anders watched him go, then backed out the door, letting it swing shut softly.

 

-ooo-

 

Hawke read his partner's note at the kitchen counter. The burden of heaviness settled more thickly in his chest, and he could hear the ragged sound the air made in his lungs as he sucked in a deep breath. He laid the paper, lined with his neat handwriting on the counter, but picked it up again just as quickly, crushing it in his hand and letting it fall. The gesture did nothing to absolve his guilt, however, or his anger. In fact, it made it worse.

His eyes lifted to the glass cabinet above the sink. He took the few steps across the small space, and without thinking about what he was doing, he found the bottle in his hand. He took a long drink, and it was like fire in his throat, his empty stomach. With the spreading warmth, Anders' words returned. _The captain wants us downtown._

He dropped the bottle in the sink. The thick glass made a harsh, clattering sound against the porcelain, but settled unbroken, balanced at a tilt on its curved side. Hawke stared at for a moment, disgust and fear vying for supremacy. With one hand, he grasped it again and upended it, sending all that remained down the drain.

It was nine in the morning.

He walked to the bathroom in a haze, shutting the door and turning the shower on. His hands shook as he undressed in the enveloping steam. _Who was he?_ He had always been the responsible one, the patriarch who had assumed his father's mantle in his youth. It had been his duty to protect his family, and he was losing them, one by one.

Stepping into the shower, he turned the water to scalding, and stood beneath the stream with his eyes closed. He could not stop picturing his mother. How he'd held her as she died, the last victim of a killer he and Anders had been hunting for months. If he'd only been better at what he did. He was a first grade detective, for Christ's sake.

He replayed it all. All the months, looking for mistakes, things they'd missed. It was an exercise he'd subjected himself to so many times, and there was never anything new. After long moments, he shut the water off and stepped out. He was not sure how long he'd been in, but his skin was reddened from the heat and from scouring it raw.

And he still didn't feel clean.

Wrapping a towel around his waist, he pushed the door open to release the steam. It was a few moments before it cleared. Wiping the residual moisture from the chill glass of the mirror, he stared at his reflection.

He was seeing what Anders had seen. Tired eyes. A beard that needed trimming. Black hair graying prematurely.

He lathered shaving cream between his hands and applied it to his neck, and then he picked up the straight razor from the back of the sink. He paused, mid-motion, and remembered what Anders had said.

_When you didn't show up, we thought..._

He glanced at the razor, the sharp metal edge. _Could he?_

Then he raised it to his neck, and slid it carefully upward toward his chin. His mind was empty for a moment, without an answer, as he gave himself over to the monotonous process, but as a more familiar visage of himself, younger and less unkempt, reappeared in the mirror, he found himself thinking again of his failure. His inability to keep his family safe.

The razor scraped once more along his neck, and clattered to the sink.

His eyes met their likeness in the mirror.

Then his fist connected with the glass, and Garrett Hawke splintered into a thousand pieces.

 

-ooo-

 

Anders shredded the empty sugar packed while he stared out the window. It was raining now. An icy, dismal winter rain. He hated the weather this time of year. Just the opposite of his partner, who loathed the sticky, humid Minnesota summers and always seemed more alive in the cold air.

Or, he had at one time.

He sighed deeply, frowning, and felt a headache coming on. It was probably from the excessive amount of coffee that he had consumed in the last twenty-four hours. He hadn't slept well over the weekend, worrying about Garrett.

Taking another sip, he glanced again at the door of Hawke's building. He had still not appeared. Checking his watch, he noted with some unease that forty-five minutes had passed since he'd gone upstairs to shower.

With a sigh, he wondered why he'd chosen this path. He had a degree in forensic anthropology. He could have been in a lab somewhere, helping to solve crimes without having to see the faces inevitably stained by them. Not only the victims, but the men and women that worked the cases. He wouldn't have to watch his partner fall apart because they had been one step behind the man that had killed his mother.

Shoving his chair back, he resolved to give him only as much additional time as it took him to stand in line to buy him a cup of coffee. Then he was going up there.

While he waited, he continued to check over his shoulder. In his anxious, caffeine saturated state, the sudden vibration of the cell phone in his pocket jolted him, and he almost dropped his cup. He snatched it out and, looking at the caller ID, bit his lip for a moment and considered not answering it. But then she'd probably try calling his partner, and Anders intended to avoid that on Hawke's behalf.

“Hi Captain,” he said, covering the mouthpiece as he reached the counter. He mouthed an order to the clerk and held up two fingers.

“Anders. Did you get in touch with your partner?”

“Yes. I woke him up,” he lied. “He needed to shower.” He handed the girl behind the counter a ten and waved off the change.

“Change of plans,” Vallen was saying. “I'm going to meet you there. I'll send a text with the address. I need you there in half an hour.”

Anders drained his almost empty cup, tossed it in the trash can, and holding the phone to his ear with his shoulder, maneuvered the two full cups into his left hand. “We'll be there,” he promised, glancing out the window again.

“See that you are,” Vallen said, and hung up.

Anders growled irritably and shoved the phone back in his pocket. He grabbed a handful of sugar packets and pocketed those too. The captain's phone call increased his earlier resolve to check on his partner, and he made for the door.

He was halfway across the street, the frigid rain plastering his long blonde hair to his cheeks, when the door to Hawke's building opened and he emerged, looking tired, but exponentially more presentable. He met Anders at the bottom of the stairs, releasing the catch on the umbrella that Anders hadn't thought to bring. He held it over them both, and Anders exhaled in relief, his breath a white cloud in the cold air.

“Vallen just called again,” he told him, holding out the coffee he'd bought for him.

Hawke mumbled his appreciation, and when he took it from him, Anders saw the the bandage twined around his hand. Several fine, fresh abrasions traced his knuckles.

“What did you do, Hawke?” he asked in alarm.

He shook his head. “Broke something,” he muttered. “It's ok.”

Anders stared at him, wondering what he'd put his fist through. Hawke sipped his coffee, avoiding Anders' eyes, and Anders thought he looked ashamed. Anders wanted to tell him it wasn't his fault. Any of it. To comfort him. But standing there in the rain wasn't the right time.

Instead, Hawke pulled his cell phone out of the pocket of his black trench coat, and pressed a button. It flickered to life, and Anders realized he'd left it off until that moment. He watched him scroll through his text messages, raising an eyebrow. Anders felt a flush of color sprawl across his nose, wondering how many of those were from him.

When he finally turned off the screen and returned the phone to his pocket, Hawke merely looked at him for a long moment, and Anders was glad for the cold, because the color on his pale features remained.

Then Hawke merely said, softly: “Thank you.”

Anders opened his mouth to ask him “for what,” but realized what Hawke had meant before he spoke. _Thank you for caring._ The magnitude of the loneliness in his words scored his heart.

“Hawke,” he began, a thousand things on his tongue that he wanted to say. Things that were ok to say to your partner, and things that weren't.

But Hawke turned away instead, nodding down the street to where Anders' car was parked.

“Let's go,” he said, and Anders had to hurry to stay beneath the umbrella.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Ghosts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The serial killer in this fiction targets both adults and juveniles (teens). I mention this in case the death of young people is a trigger for you. I do not gratuitously describe this aspect of the crime scenes.

**Sunday, December 27, 2014**

**10:46 A.M.**

**Columbia Heights, MN**

 

Avaline Vallen was waiting for them at the top of the stairs, arms habitually crossed and a narrow look in her eyes. Behind her, the third floor of the eroding section eight filing cabinet was crawling with grim-faced CSU techs, and Anders found himself trying to read the severity of the crime in their expressions. No matter how much death he had seen in his career, it never got any easier.

The captain hovered outside the doorway, an obstacle they had to first circumvent.

“Thanks for coming, you two,” she said, but her tone was a little sharper than one implying true gratitude. It was a tone Anders had heard from her a lot in the last year, around Hawke. As though she was always mildly surprised the man bothered to show up.

Out of the corner of his eye, Anders saw Hawke reach the landing and pause beside him, ignoring Vallen with practiced ease as he peered around her into the apartment. It prickled at Anders that the woman seemed to have misplaced her sympathy; Hawke had submitted to the obligatory sessions with the psychiatrist, but she seemed to maintain doubt that his clearance to return to work after his mother's death held merit. She doubted _Hawke_ , and that pissed Anders off.

“You pulled this case because Frank Crawford from the two-three recognized a similar M.O. from a case he worked a year ago,” Vallen was saying.

Hawke straightened. “A year ago? Any connection between the victims?”

Vallen shrugged. “As far as Crawford can see, there's nothing, but it needs to be checked out.”

Anders raised his eyebrows. The captain had a propensity for suggesting how the two detectives should do their jobs that had always galled him. He knew it got under his partner's skin even more.

“Who are the vics?” he asked, himself glancing around Vallen into the apartment. A worn, plaid patterned couch was all that was visible from his angle.

Vallen took a small spiral notepad from the back pocket of her pants. “Jhosa Vasquez, and his son, Miguel. The kid was only twelve. Mom came home from a third shift job and found the bodies. Their daughter was still in her room, asleep. They're both downstairs.”

The captain looked up, seeing her words being transferred into Hawke's leather binder. Anders saw Vallen's brow furrow, and he glanced as his partner. The barest hint of red traced the bandage on the hand he wrote with. Anders held his breath.

Hawke, probably feeling the captain studying him, paused, and looked up. Vallen nodded toward his bandaged knuckles.

“Rough weekend, Hawke?”

A sudden, hot fury boiled in Anders' chest as Vallen's terse off-handedness. He saw his partner's eyes narrow very slightly.

“I cut myself shaving,” he said with complete solemnity, and despite himself, Anders let out the breath he had been holding in an amused wheeze.

Vallen glared at Hawke, who snapped his binder shut and ducked around the captain into the apartment. Vallen glanced over her shoulders as the taller detective passed her, but said nothing in his wake. She looked back to Anders and raised one ginger eyebrow.

“Your partner looks like he hasn't slept in days,” she said, and the expression of doubt and foreboding that she often wore when she spoke of Hawke lately descended on her porcelain, freckled features.

Anders shrugged. “Would you sleep after what he went through? He'll be fine.” It might have been a lie, but he didn't care. The captain cornering him about Hawke's well-being made him acutely uncomfortable.

Vallen didn't look at all convinced, and Anders sensed that the issue would be revisited later. But for the moment, she glanced at her watch and said: I have to meet with the Chief of D's, but talk to Crawford about the Eldridge case he worked a year ago. He can point you toward the similar elements of the M.O.”

Anders nodded, and Vallen glanced once more over her shoulder at the activity before she took to the stairs, calling back to remind Anders to keep her updated.

Anders sighed, and shouldered into the apartment past a departing CSU tech. He immediately found his partner, crouched over the body of a middle-aged man – black, Latino, mixed - he couldn't tell. The man was covered in blood, and the right side of his face looked caved in. He felt his stomach turn.

No. It never got any easier.

He moved the few feet between he and Hawke, and crouched beside him, taking a pair of gloves from his pocket and pulling them on. His partner, engrossed in his examination, didn't look up, but he pointed out the blue nylon cord that bound the victim's feet. The man's arms were crooked behind his back, likely tied as well. Green duct tape was plastered across his mouth, eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.

“The M.E. Puts the time of death between six and eight this morning,” Hawke told him, this time indicating the crushing damage to the man's face. “Broken zygomatic arch...probably not a fatal blow, but maybe knocked him out long enough to tie him up?”

He paused, and Anders realized how well he could sense the subtle difference between the man Hawke had been, and the one before him now. His tone was dull, disinterested, flat. There was no more of his enthusiastic curiosity. The passionate pursuit of evil was now just another obligation.

From his crouching position, Hawke leaned closer to the man's face, and Anders saw his brow furrow. With a gloved finger, he brushed at black flecks that peppered the corners of the duct tape. Then, carefully, he peeled it back, holding the corpse's head steady with three fingers enclosing his chin. Anders already had a plastic evidence bag in his hand, and he received the tape from his partner and slipped it inside.

With the tape removed, Hawke pressed a finger between the corpse's lips and pried his mouth open gently. Anders leaned forward, forehead inches from Hawke's, and they both peered at the substance filling the man's mouth. With two fingers, Anders reached between the victim's teeth and extracted the material. He held it up to his nose, and a contemplative second later, his eyes flicked to Hawke.

“It's dirt,” he said.

“Dirt?” Hawke echoed, squinting at the man's open mouth. It was filled with it, covering his tongue.

“Obviously post mortem,” Anders observed, thinking that the man would have tried to swallow it, or at least aspirated on it if he had been alive when it was placed there.

Hawke waved a hand behind him and one of the CSU techs appeared at his side. He instructed the woman to take a sample of the dirt, and Anders' eyes roved along the rest of Vasquez's shirtless torso.

There were numerous lacerations, some superficial, others deep. He pointed to one on the lower left of his chest, above his heart. Congealed blood was smeared thickly around it, pooled on the floor at his side. He'd seen enough stab wounds in his career to recognize a fatal one. Hawke saw it, and his eyes scanned the floor around the body, Anders assumed searching for the weapon that had done it.

A voice from behind interrupted them. “The binding is new.”

They turned as one. An older man, tall, thin, close cropped grap hair and drooping, nineteenth century mustache, sidled up to them and glanced at the body before fixing them both with an intense, blue gaze.

“Frank Crawford,” he said, nodding. He didn't proffer a hand, given the circumstances. 'Two-three homicide. I worked a case a lot like this a little over a year back out of the two-seven in West St. Paul.”

Hawke gently let go of the victim's head, though with rigor it remained safely aligned. The CSU tech took this opportunity to stoop and begin delicately scraping the dirt into a plastic, cylindrical container. Hawke took out his leather binder again, barely catching the pen that that almost rolled out and dropped to the floor.

“You said the binding is new,” he repeated, and at the other man's curt nod, he added: “But... the dirt isn't?”

Crawford looked surprised, and glanced down at the body. “Dirt?”

Anders indicated the substance exiting the man's mouth at this moment. “Mouth is filled with dirt. Was taped closed with green duct tape.”

The other detective seemed paler, glancing again at the body before he looked back to Anders and Hawke. “Carl didn't have dirt in his mouth, no. But the killer had two calling cards. One is in the other room.” He nodded over their shoulders. “I'm banking you'll find the other in his hands.”

Anders' gaze snapped back to the body at the same moment as Hawke's. A quick question to the CSU tech indicated she had what she needed.

“Help me turn him over,” Hawke told Anders, and the two of them rotated the stiff body to its side, revealing hands bound with the same nylon cord. The wrists were purple and red, evidence that he'd had long enough to try to free himself before he'd been killed. His left hand, however, which bore a gold wedding band, was also curled around a piece of paper rolled like a scroll.

Anders carefully pried the fingers open and extracted the page, unrolling it between he and Hawke, so that they could both see its contents. It was a page torn from a book, the format of a poem, and there was a section highlighted in green. He read it aloud:

 

“Here all suspicion needs must be abandoned,

All cowardice must needs be here extinct.

We to the place have come, where I have told thee,

Thou shall behold the people dolorous

Who have foregone the good of intellect.”

 

“It's Dante,” Anders muttered, bemused. 

“That's what I was afraid of,” Crawford sighed, and then he produced a plastic evidence bag from an inside pocket of his coat, received into Hawke's outstretched hand.

“This was at the first crime scene.”

Hawke's voice intoned:

 

“Day was departing, and the embrowned air

Released the animals that are on earth

From their fatigues; and I the only one

Made myself ready to sustain the war”

 

“What the fuck?” he added in punctuation.

“What the fuck indeed,” Crawford muttered. “You need to see the rest,” he added.

That said, he moved across the den, crossing the tiny kitchen with it's yellowed linoleum floor. He hovered to the side of another room, littered with toys, painted a bright, happy pink. Anders and Hawke stood shoulder to shoulder, peering inside. For a moment, it seemed like nothing other than a young girl's room, until Anders saw what was off. At the foot of the bed with it's Frozen comforter, was a single, white rose, unopened.

“That's why I called Major Case,” Crawford explained.

Anders saw Hawke nod, distractedly. Then he said: “There is a second body?”

“Yep.” Frank was moving away, and his fellow detectives peeled themselves from the doorway of the little girl's room and followed him down the hall.

Crawford led them to another bedroom, also small, and crowded with overlarge furniture and a haphazard array of childish clutter. A cheap metal desk, scattered with baseball cards and empty soda cans, shoved under a window. There was another tabled, with a small television, and and ancient VCR stacked with unlabeled tapes. It faced the bed, where the boy was.

The three of them stared at the body, and for a brief moment Anders wished that he possessed Hawke's recent impassivity. Miquel Vasquez's eyes were closed, as though he had still been asleep with his throat had been cut. The pillow and the pale blue sheets were soaked through with dark blood that in some places still glistened with moisture. His mouth also bore green duct tape.

“This is the same way we found Devon Eldridge,” Crawford said, his voice bleak, and full of memory. Kids were always the hardest to deal with. “Minus the duct tape,” he clarified.

“You mean early in the morning, still in bed?” Hawke asked, still looking at the body.

Crawford nodded, and Hawke glanced at Anders. “So he thought cutting his throat in his sleep was a peaceful way to go?”

Both of them knew otherwise, and the knowledge was mirrored in the other's expression.

Anders turned away from the scene, back to the door frame. “So you found a white rose in the Eldridge's apartment, as well?”

Crawford nodded, and was about to say something else, but Hawke interrupted him. “The Eldridges have a daughter?”

“No,” Crawford said. “Devon was their only child. We found the flower on _their_ bed. On the side his wife slept on.”

“She wasn't there.” There was no question in Hawke's words then. He looked at Anders, but his eyes held that distant expression they took on whenever he was thinking outside his own perspective. Seeking the perspective of a killer.

“It was exactly the same?” he asked. “The flower? A white rose, unopened?”

“Yea,” Crawford responded, grim.

Anders stepped around the other detective, moving back into the nearby kitchen before the walls closed in on him.

“Any of the neighbors see or hear anything?” he asked.

The detective pulled out a notepad, creased from being kept in his back pocket. “Actually,” he said, “the lady that lives over in 4-D was coming up from the basement laundry and said she saw a man she didn't recognize from the building. Passed her coming down the stairs. Said he looked like he was in a hurry. Five-six, five-seven. Nose ring. Flannel shirt. Longish blonde hair. Hat.”

Hawke was nodding, tucked the leather binder under his arm then, and extended his hand to Crawford after peeling away his gloves and shoving them in his pocket. “We'll be in touch with you,” he told him. “We'll need everything you have about the Eldridge case.”

Crawford nodded. “I'll run it up to you myself,” he said.

-ooo-

 

They found Jenny Vasquez and her three year old daughter Sam in the super's office on the first floor. The woman, her eyes dry and empty, sat on a shabby orange couch, an unopened bottle of water in one hand and her daughter's head in her lap. Only the girl looked up when they entered, thumb pressed between her lips. Anders smiled at her as he sat, on the opposite end of the couch, but there was no reciprocal expression from the child. He wondered then how much the littler girl had seen before shed been removed from the upstairs apartment.

“We're very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Vasquez,” Hawke said gently. 'But there are some questions we need to ask you about this morning.”

He unfolded a metal chair and seated himself across from the stricken woman, who looked at him for the first time. Anders heard the plastic of the water bottle she held creak as her fingers tightened around it.

“I wasn't here,” she said, and Anders heard the fear in her voice. Fear that she had only narrowly skirted a like fate.

'You were just coming from work?” Anders asked her, remembering what the captain had said. “Where is that?”

The woman looked at him then, eyes wide and haunted. Anders saw the brownish-yellow discoloration beneath one that she'd tried to disguise with makeup. “I'm a nurse,” she said. 'I work thirds at Fairview.”

“Your husband hit you?” It was blunt.

Mrs. Vasquez touched her fingers quickly to the ridge of her cheekbone, and she pulled them away almost as fast. She said nothing. Anders threw a meaningful glance at his partner.

“Your son,” Hawke said, and Anders saw tears gather in Mrs. Vasquez's eyes before she looked at the other detective. “Was he in any kind of trouble, recently?”

At first, she didn't speak, and only stared at Hawke as if the question confused her. Then, looking at the floor, she nodded slowly.

“He gets in fights at school, and he stays out half the night with those friends of his. They're all older than him. Smoking dope, standing on the street corner when he ought to be in class...” She trailed off. Her hand moved to cover her mouth as she seemed to notice that she'd been speaking of her son's behavior in the present tense.

Anders let the silence extend for a moment, his partner writing once more. He looked at the little girl, who was staring intently at him with large, dark eyes.

“Your daughter was in her room when you came home?” Anders asked then.

Mrs. Vasquez looked sharply at her daughter, and unsteady hand stroking the little girl's curling black hair away from her face.

“She was still asleep. The rose was … oh _God_ the killer was _in_ her room!” She looked wildly at Anders.

Before he could find words to comfort the woman, if he even possessed that ability, his partner stood and moved toward the door.

“We'll make sure someone from Victim's Services gets in touch with you,” he said, and Anders stood as well, knowing that Hawke saw what he did. That this woman was no killer.

But it was part of his job to walk away from the hurt, and the sadness. He had to.

Or, like Hawke, he'd never sleep.

They were about to leave her behind, there on the faded orange couch, when Hawke turned back to her abruptly.

“A man,” he said, holding a hand out at shoulder level. “About this tall, longish blonde hair, nose ring... does that sound like anyone you know?”

Jenny Vasquez blinked, as though the question made no sense to her. Both eyebrows lifted, and she nodded briefly, shrugging.

“Cole. Why?”

“Cole.” Goren repeated the name.

Mrs. Vasquez nodded again, plainly not understanding why the detective was asking. “He's a … social worker. Children's services. But... what? Did someone see him here? He wasn't supposed to come by until Thursday.”

Hawke glanced at Anders, then back to the woman.

“Um... thank you, Jenny. Someone will be in touch with you, ok? And we'll... need to talk to you again.”

She could only stare at them. As they walked away, and shut the door between them. In her face was confusion, despair, shock, fear.

It was all familiar, but it shouldn't have been.

Justice was but a part of absolution.

And none of it ever got any easier.

  
  


-ooo-

 

**Sunday, December 27, 2015**

**11:42 P.M.**

**Downtown St. Paul, MN**

**Major Case Precinct**

Anders yawned, and taking one look at the cold, milky brown coffee that he had been about to drink, he set the over sized mug aside and rubbed his tired eyes with his knuckles. He shouldn't be been this tired; it wasn't even nine o'clock yet, and he was used to working cases with his partner until well past midnight. But he hadn't slept well the last several nights, and unlike his partner, who seemed accustomed to long periods of insomnia, Anders needed his eight hours.

He glanced at Hawke, sitting across from him at the desk they shared, and his partner looked no more tired than he ever looked these past few months, which was probably telling in itself. His bearded chin rested in his hand, absentmindedly rubbing thumb and forefinger together. He was looking at the file on the Eldridge murder that Crawford had, true to his word, run up to them the hour before, but Anders couldn't tell if he was actually reading anything. He was much more prone to these long periods of vacant silence, which in the past were almost always productive, but just as often now seemed little more than his inability to focus.

“Ok,” Anders tried, “so far we have what?” He picked up a pencil and pulled a legal pad over onto the stacks of papers he'd been going through. His partner didn't answer him immediately, and so he added: “The vics are both males, father and son.”

Hawke looked at him then, moving to prop both elbows on the table, his tall from slumped over the Eldridge file.

“Both of the boys were around the same age,” he added. “Devon Eldridge was thirteen, and Miguel Vasquez was twelve. But they both have juvenile records a page long.”

He picked up a sheaf of papers and flipped to one. “Breaking and entering, petty theft, possession of stolen property, assault. Carl Eldridge, Devon's father... not much better.”

Anders made notations next to Devon's name on his notepad and then pulled the manila folder containing information from the background checks they'd run on the Vasquez family. He found the page he sought, and glanced over it.

“Jhosa has been in and out of prison for the last two years. Did eleven twenty-nine for possession in 2010. Numerous calls for domestics, no charges filed.”

He looked at Hawke, who was already shaking his head. “They were in different county lock-ups.” He flipped through a few more pages. “I don't think the connection is the parents.”

“Anders raised an eyebrow. “The boys then? There's nothing in their files that show they were ever within a twenty mile radius of one another.”

“How long until we get the get the reports back on the Inferno pages. Maybe we'll get lucky and get a print.” He didn't sound hopeful.

“Should be later tonight, or tomorrow,” Anders said. “And I talked to Children's Services while you were downstairs in forensics.”

“The social worker?”

“Yeah. Cole Grey. They said they'd have him stop by in the morning.”

Hawke leaned back in his chair, looked as though he was about to say something else, when his eyebrows suddenly came together. He sat forward again and rifled through another stack of pages. He stopped at one, scanning it while Anders looked on, wondering what he'd said that had triggered his insight.

“It's him,” he said said. “He's the connection.”

“The social worker?” Anders knew his tone was incredulous.

Hawke shook his head, but the gesture was one of perplexity rather than negation. He glanced at Anders as he held the page aloft, reading it.

“...spoke with Children's Services employee Cole Grey concerning his last visit to the residence of Devon Eldridge on May 26, 2012. Said he originally contacted the family to follow up on a report that Devon had shown up for school with bruising and difficulty breathing. He said the family denied the abuse, but he felt confident that Carl Eldridge was the cause of Devon's injuries.”

Hawke paused here and looked at Anders again. He finished what he'd been reading without looking down. “Grey was seen arguing with Carl Eldridge in the hall in the hallway outside his apartment the night before the death, but no conclusive evidence of involvement in the homicide.”

They stared at one another for a moment, Anders suddenly finding Hawke studying his face. His familiar features softened, and he stretched a hand out across the table where Anders' own hand was limp, pencil flat on his notepad. For a moment, he thought Hawke was going to touch him, and his skin prickled, but his partner's hand paused.

“Go home, Lukas,” he said. 'I'll stay here and pull what I can about this guy...go through all this again...wait on the labs. You go get some sleep.”

Anders looked at him in appalled wonder. “Garrett, you've been getting much less sleep than me. You're pushing twelve hours today already. You need to go home too.”

“I don't need to go home,” he said, looking at his desk, his tone peculiar.

“Garrett...” he began, wanting with every fiber of himself to ask Hawke to come home with him instead. To let him take care of him, but Hawke looked up at him sharply, and in his eyes was a look of frustration and pleading.

Anders held his hands up. “Ok, ok. I'm going.” He straightened the rows of papers on his desk and shrugged into his coat. He picked up his bag, and glanced again at Hawke.

“Promise me you'll get some rest tonight, Garrett. And eat something?” He knew he sounded like a worried lover, but fuck it, because he was one. Whether Hawke knew it or not.

Hawke waved a dismissive hand. “I'll be fine,” he insisted. “Go.”

Anders sighed and left him there, hating the thought that perhaps it _was_ better if Hawke stayed at work, where even late at night on a Sunday, he wouldn't be by himself in the squad room. Anders might be able to fall asleep more easily than if he'd been thinking of Hawke alone in his apartment with his ghosts.

He stepped into the elevator, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder.

If he had, he would have seen Hawke, staring dolefully after him as he walked away.

  
  


 


	3. Secrets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little shorter than others, because the next part is a whole lot of case advancement, and would have made this chapter about 10000 words if I'd combined it. Enjoy some sad angst while I weave my web.

**Monday, December 28 th, 2015**

**7:08 A.M.**

**Lukas Anders**

 

He _had_ slept a little better the night before, except he'd dreamed about the funeral. The one where they'd buried Hawke's mother. It had been raining that day, the cemetery a peppered with the black umbrellas of the few people Hawke had allowed to attend: his sister, Fenris, a smattering of his mother's friends. Hawke was a cop. Cops showed solidarity, and there could have been a sea of those black umbrellas, but the only ones Hawke had let share his burden were the ones that manned the gate and kept back the sensationalist reporters. Garrett Hawke: the man who had caught the serial killer that had murdered his own mother, laying her to rest. _What a dramatic photograph_.

In the dream, however, it hadn't been Hawke's mother in the coffin. Anders stood alone at the edge of the pit as it was lowered in, the other people gathered about like ghosts at the edge of his consciousness. Then, he'd stooped and lain a white rose on the glistening surface of the casket. An unopened white rose.

That was when he'd awoken, moments before his arm went off.

Now, stalled in the maddening I-94 rush hour traffic, his patience was deserting him. The dream was disturbing enough, and he had done little but contemplate the meaning behind his own hand laying the rose on Hawke's coffin. The rest of the dream was clear enough.

Anders should expect to find him at his desk when he arrived. In the three years that they had worked together, Hawke had almost always arrived earlier than he, being a light sleeper. Even in recent months, that hadn't changed. But after his vanishing act over Christmas weekend, his presence – his continuity – seemed tenuous: a vapor ready to be scattered on the next wind.

He slammed on his brakes when the car in front of him stopped suddenly, red taillights distorted in the rain that streamed down his windshield. The Minnesota January thaw was early this year, with the ubiquitous dirty-white snow shrinking and pocking in the steady drizzle. It was black ice season. Anders wisely removed his coffee to the dashboard cup holder, and found his cell phone on the seat beside him. Glancing at the clock, he decided it was surely a reasonable hour for Hawke to be awake, and he pressed his number on his speed dial.

His stomach turned when it went straight to his voicemail. He had an unpleasant flashback to the weekend just past, only after seeing him yesterday the anxiety that accompanied it was much more potent.

He thought of the blood on Hawke's hand.

“ _Damn_ it, Garrett,” he hissed to himself, throwing the phone back into the seat. He gripped the steering-wheel tightly, straining to see over the cars in front of him. In this traffic, he was either half a mile or thirty minutes from the exit that would bring him to the office. He thought for a brief moment of weaving out of traffic, punching the lights, and taking the shoulder, bypassing downtown St. Paul and going to Hawke's apartment in Minneapolis instead. Before he took his foot off the break, he forced himself to take a deep breath and told himself he was overreacting.

Maybe Hawke was already at work. He usually was at this time of day. Maybe this time he hadn't turned his phone off on purpose.

It was no good, being in love with someone that you couldn't be with. Especially when that someone was a person you had to see every day. Anders thought Hawke knew it, because sometime in the past years he'd quit talking to Anders like a “buddy.” They'd share a beer at a bar after work and talk about their childhoods, or the car Hawke was rebuilding (which was over Anders' head), or hockey, which they both loved. Hawke never mentioned the women he sometimes dated and never stayed with. Anders knew he avoided their phone calls when he was with him. The few times Anders had tried to be a good friend and broach that subject, Hawke had diverted the conversation with painful obviousness. Anders was trained to look for things that were buried beneath the surface: yes, Hawke knew, but he didn't avoid him, for whatever reason.

At least not until lately.

He picked up his phone again and dialed their extension at Major Case. It rang three times and then someone picked up. It wasn't at all who he'd been expecting.

“Vallen.”

Anders' heart stopped in his chest. _What was Aveline Vallen doing answering their line? What had happened to his partner?_ It was a moment before he could summon his powers of speech.

“Captain?” He heard the weak sound of his own voice. Sometime behind him laid on their horn and he realized the traffic in front of him had moved ahead. He stepped on the accelerator more forcefully than he meant to.

“Anders. Good.” Vallen said. “You on your way in?”

“Yeah. About fifteen minutes away. What's wrong?”

There was a pause. “That's something we're going to have to talk about when you get here. Your partner was here all night. I made him go upstairs around six this morning to catch a couple hours' sleep in the crib. You can wake him up when you get here. After we have a few words.”

Anders' mind raced. “Ok, but I'm going to...” he began, but the captain had already clicked off.

He sighed and tossed his phone aside once more, and then he changed lanes and bypassed his exit, heading toward Hawke's apartment.

 

-ooo-

 

Anders had been about to tell the captain that he was going to stop by his partner's apartment on his way in, to grab him a change of clothes and his toothbrush. Now, as he walked up the stairs to 2-B, he questioned if that was the sole reason he'd wanted to stop here. He really did feel that it would be in Hawke's best interest to be as put together as possible in front of Vallen, who Anders knew was well on her way to considering his partner a liability.

He wondered as he found the key Hawke had given him “for emergencies,” that perhaps what he was really here looking for was insight. Evidence of the level of his despair: a tangible element of his inner chaos. Some physical clue as to how he could help him.

He didn't know what he expected to find as he pushed the door open, and he had to remind himself that he'd just spoken to the captain and confirmed Hawke wasn't here. Something tingling and uncomfortable crawled up his neck as he slipped the key in the door, a sense of infraction. Violation. Like he shouldn't be here.

_Then why did he have a key? Wasn't that trust?_

The inside of Hawke's apartment was cold, as if he hadn't had the heat on in days. He swiped a hand across a light switch as he closed the door behind him. A lamp across the room came on, the muted glow that it put forth clearly only intended to illuminate the corner with what was likely the only piece of expensive furniture Hawke owned: a brown leather reclining chair. Two books lay open, one on top of the other across the arm, and Anders could easily imagine him there, reading late into the night.

Books. That was another thing they talked about. Hawke had a gruff exterior, acted like a goon around his sister and friends, but his waters ran deep. He loved historical fiction and spy novels. Their personal book collections had become entangled over the years. Anders smiled for a brief second as his eyes swept along the two bookshelves adjacent to one another on the far wall, seeing many of his own mingled with Hawke's.

The treadmill that had always stood across from the chair was folded in and pushed against the wall, unplugged. He'd thought perhaps he'd been burning off steam by working out at home, like he'd done habitually through most of their partnership. If not, then that said to him that his significant weight loss over the last few months must have been from neglecting to eat.

The thought led his gaze over the dark granite counter-top of the island that separated the living area from the kitchen. A glint of gray early morning light on glass caught his eye, and he circled the island and looked into the sink. It was a bottle, standing upended in the drain, and he turned it carefully about and tilted it toward him so he could read the label. 1792 Ridgemont Reserve. He righted it, twisting it back like he'd found it, and frowned. Had he poured it out, or was his habit to finish it? The thought of Hawke drinking, especially alone and in the frame of mind he was in lately scared him perhaps more than anything else so far.

He pocketed the keys that he still held in one hand and left that thought behind in the kitchen.

 

The door to his bedroom was open. The dark blue and green striped comforter was in a crushed heap on the floor, the sheets wound in knots. There was one pillow remaining on the bed, but the rest were in the floor, like they'd been kicked off. There was a bottle of tequila, half empty, on the nightstand, and a bottle of pills beside it.

Without thinking, Anders navigated the chaos and snatched the prescription, holding it aloft. Xanax. His stomach sank, and he hovered there before setting the bottle back down beside the tequila. It was a potentially lethal combo, and he felt like he was leaving a live bomb on the bedside table.

He rounded the bed, filing this topic into the _'necessary uncomfortable conversation'_ compartment, and opened Hawke's wardrobe. It was a massive, subtly carved antique – if anything, Hawke had sophisticated taste in furniture – and found what he was looking. Hanging on a hook on the left hand door was a dark blue garment bag. He pulled the zipper down and glanced inside.

The black suit hung neatly inside the thin plastic from the dry cleaner whose partially crumpled yellow ticket still clung to the hanger. He scanned the shirts hanging neatly within the wardrobe, and almost laughed at himself for selecting his favorite one – a red one that set off his dusky coloring and black hair in a way that made his blood boil. He shouldn't be thinking of things like that right now, damnit. _Have some shame, Anders, you pathetic sot._

Nevertheless, he draped the shirt over his arm, and then pulled the dry cleaning ticket off the hanger. He was in the process of maneuvering the shirt into the bag when something struck him. A memory. He looked at the crumpled ticket in his hand. It was dated almost exactly nine months ago. He pushed the plastic up to get a better look at the suit. He recognized the almost imperceptible striped pattern, black upon lighter black, and remembered how he'd noticed it standing behind him at his mother's funeral.

Appalled, he shoved the dry cleaning receipt into his pocket, tossed the shirt on the bed, and rezipped the garment bag. He exchanged it for a solid black one, and checking his watch, realized he needed to hurry. He snatched a black tie, and added other articles of clothing he'd need into another, empty garment bag. Then he made for the bathroom to grab his toothbrush and a shaving kit.

The door was closed, and he pushed it open, intending to simply snatch what Hawke would need to get cleaned up, but what he saw stopped him cold, his hand frozen on the doorknob and his jaw parted in shock.

He knew now what had happened to his hand.

What would have been his reflection in the mirror above the sink was broken and divided in places by gaping holes where parts of the shattered glass had fallen out. He could see where the spider web of cracks was finer, closer together, radiating out from the place where his fist had struck it.

He looked down into the sink, and touched his hand to his lips in vying horror and sorrow. Shards of the mirror glittered there beneath the faint light from the high window above. Underneath the glass was a straight razor, the kind he knew he used to shave.

Anders sank down on the side of the bathtub.

All of it.... the glass, the sink, the blade of the razor … was stained in places by Hawke's now dried blood. It had trailed down the white porcelain into the drain, and was smudged across the edge of the basin. He glanced down and saw several drops on the floor, and the waste basket where he'd thrown the toilet paper he'd used to stop the bleeding. The wrapping of the bandage he'd put on.

Had he _been_ shaving with that razor? Or had he just been holding it, looking at himself in the mirror? What thoughts had been going through his head when he'd smashed it?

Anders sucked in a breath and stood quickly. Hawke either had something in his squad locker he could use to shave or he could go without.

He couldn't be here.

He couldn't be that close to the edge of his partner's dark cliff for another moment and face Vallen, or Hawke, without tears. They threatened his vision even then, as he slammed the door on that place, forgetting the toothbrush.

He was surrounded in this apartment by the maddening dark distance between them that he could not cross.

Anders quickly gathered the garment bag, a gesture he'd meant to be helpful that now seemed so utterly insignificant. So feeble.

He closed the front door behind him, hurried down the stairs, and found that he couldn't shake the feeling that he had intruded here. Had stepped on a secret.

Something that was only a secret because no one had taken the time to look closely enough.

 

 


End file.
